Prime Minister owes an explanation on Mallya leaving country: Arvind Kejriwal

New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday demanded Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "explanation" over how business tycoon Vijay Mallya could leave the country which he claimed was not possible without "approval" from the top.

"Since CBI directly reports to PM, PM owes an answer why Mallya was allowed to leave India. CBI couldn't have allowed without approval from top," Kejriwal tweeted.

Kejriwal's comments come amid a raging controversy over UB Group Chairman Mallya leaving India amid continuing efforts by banks to recover dues totalling over Rs 9,000 crore of unpaid loans and interest from him.

Kejriwal also attacked the Centre for having "back stabbed" jewellers by proposing excise duty on non-silver jewellery items.

"Modi Govt has back stabbed Jewellers. Modi govt doing same what UPA was doing," Kejriwal said in another tweet, referring to an old tweet of Modi where he had asked the UPA government to roll back excise duty on non-branded gold jewellery.

Meanwhile, a strike by jewellers and bullion traders on the issue continued for a 11th straight day today. Union Finance Ministry has clarified that the jewellers only with turnover of more than Rs 12 crore will be liable to pay one per cent excise duty.

The petitioner company, which did not bag the contract, contended that one of the conditions of the tender required that a bidder should have work experience of installing such an audio-visual system in a prestigious government building valued at not less than Rs 111 lakhs.

It was argued that the tender violated the mandate of Article 14 of the Constitution (equality) and the guidelines of the Central Vigilance Commission. There was no necessity to keep any secrecy, for whatever is uploaded on the website of the PWD for this e-tender ought to be in public domain. None of the uploaded bids or tenders should be password protected.

In the present case, password protection given to respondent 3 violates mandate of Article 14 of the Constitution and the Central Vigilance Commission guidelines, the petitioner further submitted.

Moreover, the petitioner contended that PWD and particularly its Executive Engineer, in taking the decision, has compromised with the terms and conditions of the tender.

"They have been relaxed in order to favour the third respondent (Ram Sangam Infotech Pvt Ltd)."

The petitioner argued that the respondent company does not have the requisite experience to maintain such type of equipment, including digital audio conference system with voting camera control and language interpretation system and hence it did not meet the eligibility criteria to bid for the contract.

Despite this, PWD certified that the respondent company had qualified the conditions of the tender and accordingly it bagged the contract, said the petitioner.